Drought
by hikachu
Summary: You knew, you always knew. And I watched, and I didn't understand. Deep down, I never really wanted to open my eyes. Slight Suzaku/Lelouch.


**D R O U G H T**

_Summer, move forward and leave your heat anchored in dust_

_Forgotten him, cheated him, painted illusions of lust_

_Now language escape, fugitive of forgiveness,_

_Leaving as trace only circles of rust._

(Vienna Teng, _Drought_)

…Do you remember?

Lately, the grass from back then has stopped being a bright green stain blurred by the flow of time on the back of my closed eyelids, and the sunlight which emanated from behind it, from behind the trees and hills and the end of the sea, is no more a smudged halo, but just that: light, warmth, that scorching thing that bothered our skin from lunchtime to sunset.

As the days go by, I can make out the shape of the petals that formed the golden crown of tall sunflowers surrounding us. Perhaps soon, the images in my mind will be clear enough for me to count them one by one, those petals of gold and velvet, just like when you, large eyes (so different from mine or my father's) glued to the dark sky, used to try and count every star bright enough to reach our gazes and paint our hair with soft silver across the frightening distance of light-years upon light-years. You would try to, in those summer nights, though you knew it was useless and thought it was silly; and you'd stay like that—perfectly still for hours, except when the protests of your aching neck became too loud, and you'd scrunch up your nose or clutch some thin strands of grass with your fingers, accidentally brushing against mine.

But I know – _this_ much, at least, I can say I _truly_ know – that even back then, you weren't the type to turn your eyes away from the wreckage that was the world to give into childish fantasies. You were too smart and too proud to delude yourself and believe you could stay a child after all that you'd witnessed. But even as proud as you were, you never learnt how to put your wishes first, and so you'd sit between the two of us, lifting your eyes to the sky, choosing, time after time, to count the stars for blind eyes and a gentle laughter. And I, even I who dreamed of slaying the monsters devouring my country, and not of fleeing from them, would let myself be carried to the Milky Way by your voice – so unwavering and certain to grate on my nerves whenever we'd fight.

Undesired, unwelcome, you came into my life and I learned to dream, to be gentler, if only a little (and only now I understand this), as you found out how to forget about yourself, how to reassure and lie, and cook and clean and soil your hands—first with dirt, then with blood. All for her sake—for the sake of that little girl you'd try to count the endless stars for.

…Do you remember those stars, Lelouch?

_________

It's not quite funny as it is unexpected—this feeling of cloth and then of skin breaking, muscles giving in and life gently greeting cold steel. Only a few moments ago, the sword was shining like a comet as it cut through the air: its gems were tiny, precious stars, and its steel was as silvery as your hair (yours _and_ this tyrant's) in those summer nights so many years ago.

As it tries to dive further into its new nest of flesh and bones, the sword meets a certain resistance, and you know it's only natural, for even a delicate body like that was born to struggle and fight to survive, regardless of what you and its owner may have decided. You know it's natural; you know you have just to tighten your hold on the hilt and push in a little more, and then everything will end.

You know what's happening – all the sickeningly detailed reasons and bland anatomy lessons you thought you'd forgotten, all flooding into your head at the same time. You know what death—_this_ kind of death means and implies: you are a soldier, after all. And a soldier, as ridiculous as it sounds, learns to kill in order to protect and, anyhow, shouldn't you have already killed enough people to avoid this nauseous feeling, this heaviness settling on the pit of your stomach and your heart? Yes, you reply to the voice in your head, yes, I have, but not like this, not like _this_—and thus you know you're not only a soldier but also a coward, now.

Violet eyes become impossibly wide for a moment—white teeth clenching and clicking—a sharp intake of breath—You see your father dying at your hand for the second time: this moment is the past, your old mistakes and choices, but also the future you're giving up and the friend – your only friend – that you are taking away from yourself. Although it is _now_, this moment knows no space for the present.

You don't exist anymore, and your hands tremble at this thought, as his body does, too, for death – this death – is so, so painful, and then it hits you—

—finally, you understand, you can see: that even a demon incarnate is human after all.

Or, rather, you learn that there are no demons in this world. Only humans and their (selfish, selfish) wishes.

_________

We'd run, taking turns at pushing her wheelchair in our dashing daze, and she'd laugh and scream from time to time: "Faster, faster!", and you – ever the perfect older brother – would scowl at me whenever I decided to grant her wish. A new chance to defy you looked always too delicious to me to be passed up, and I only stopped listening to Nunnally's exhilarated plea after that one time we actually tripped and she sprained her wrist but tried hard not to cry so that you wouldn't worry, and I believed you would really kill me on the spot.

A few times, when the air was too humid and too hot to bear, we ventured to the river in search of some solace, and I remember your flushed face and indignant tone as you yelled at me not to strip in front of a girl, and I remember Nunnally giggling – not in the least insulted by the idiocy of your statement – and I remember smirking and throwing you into the clear water, your dandy outfit quickly clinging to your skin much like your drenched hair to your cheeks and forehead. And _then_ I remember—

In the morning and in the afternoon, when I was finished exercising and the perspective of empty hours suddenly loomed above my head, I used to explore the temple's grounds in search of you. Then we'd usually play together, or you could decide to stay among the sunflowers till suppertime, reciting old tales and nursery rhymes to your sister, because, you explained to me once, girls enjoy this kind of things, and you were always very fair to Nunnally. And the first times I'd just sit down, staring dumbly as I tried to understand in vain those words which sounded so harsh to my Japanese ears—And, yes, it _was_ boring, but your presence had already made me forget how I managed to spend my days alone before.

I used those quiet hours to study you, and I saw how you constantly wore a smile when talking to your sister, because you knew that careful ears could hear the curve bending your thin lips even when dull eyes couldn't see it. You knew, you always knew. And I watched, and I didn't understand.

…I was the one who never noticed anything, if not when it was too late. Deep down, I never really wanted to open my eyes.

_________

From this distance (or lack of thereof), you can see him shaking with pain; you can _feel_ those shudders on your own skin, inside your own flesh like a small and yet terrible earthquake: you are so close your heartbeats meet, spiteful of layers of heavy cloth and muscles and everything else. _Everything else_.

It's exactly like your absurdly fierce fistfights less than a decade ago: the two of you standing, serious, yes, and proud, sure, but somehow too close for something as dramatic and hateful as a fight. The only difference, today, is that neither of us will be forced to mumble a shameful 'sorry' to the other: simply enough, this is the end.

And as you two end together (because, really, it makes no difference at all that one will live while the other dies: this is the end for the both of you) he looks straight into your eyes (he knows where to find them behind the mask; he knows everything) and comes closer, closerclosercloser, and he arches against you – like a voluptuous cat, like a lover in the midst of lovemaking. He speaks; you cry—He's warm—he is, for now, he will be for a while longer; for a few moments still he'll be alive just like you. Afterwards, you'll be left with nothing but ashes in your palm and the world on your shoulders.

_________

Do you remember them, Lelouch, those tall sunflowers with crowns of gold and leaves of velvet? They watched over us even when the cicadas fell silent and the sky was dark, and we – the two of us alone – sat together, trying to speak of dreams and a greater good through broken sentences and empty silence.

At night, words after words slipped from our mouths, but quietly now, because Nunnally was already asleep and a mere screen of rice paper wasn't as thick as the embellished doors of the Aries palace. We spoke almost in turns, and in turns we fell silent. Even pretending to be angry at each other wouldn't work to bring back the usual atmosphere.

I remember how everything felt… heavy; all around and inside me—_us_, probably. So oddly real and… painful. I remember the slight chill of wet grass under my palm, and that of your hand barely touching mine. That way, I could clearly feel your fingers trembling a bit, twitching, as if aching to get closer to my own—or maybe I was the one whose hand was shaking, the one constantly trying to reach out for you and constantly failing—I'll never know for sure. I hadn't enough courage to lower my gaze on our hands and find out; nor could I bring myself to look at your face for too long, at night.

Because of this, I—All I can recall from those times is the feeling of our skin barely touching, tickled by damp grass, and the gaudy colour of your eyes: two bright, large spots shining on your face. Everything else is blurred, as if coming from a dream. As if it wasn't actually important.

The contempt we shared over our short, harmless limbs, instead, is engraved into my heart with the frustration we felt at being unable to build the world we saw in our dreams, and—

Your smile, Lelouch, is there too. The contours of your childish face are vague in my memories, but the light emanating from your smile is—

_________

The crowd is—silent—silently hoping.

You can't help but watch; you can't help but accept this, all of this, even as you think: it doesn't feel as I thought it would.

And witnessing the death of your first friend is, indeed, a hundred, a thousand times worse than you'd imagined. But it's not like your feelings matter anymore – you're dead to the world; to this crowd, already – and so you watch; you simply watch as beautiful crimson flowers bloom on his white vest, and then you wish, you idiotically naïve fool, you wish you'd brought him to the festival, that summer, to see the fireworks exploding all across the sky, so similar to his blood now, and yet so much more beautiful. You wish you'd gone and seen them together.

_________

—I—Sometimes, I almost wish you could still laugh at me, you know.

_________

Then he stumbles and falls, and it looks so wrong, so misplaced, and the noises of his body falling make you cringe as you think that an object, something inanimate, would have made the same noises. There's no dignity, no dignity at all, in this.

And you are cold; your neck feels cold even under the layers of cloth; your skin misses already being caressed by his last, cruel order. But you'll accept that one too.

Your hands instead are warm—unbearably so, even, as his blood soaks your gloves and your cuffs. You can't see it, but it burns too much to let you ignore its presence: his blood is scorchingly hot on your skin, like the sun in those summer days, and you think that, perhaps, this is a reason to love it, even if only a little.

Suddenly, the crowd is roaring, crying out of sheer joy, because the tyrant is dead. Zero is once again the man of miracles.

_________

That summer was but a moment bound to pass, and we were but children—too young and weak to do anything to turn our ideals into reality. I wonder if those months would have been sweeter, our lives different, had we given our all to what we had back then, rather than to of a far off utopia.

When we first met after so many years, I used to imagine this life that could have been – the three of us living together, happy – quite often, but eventually, even that fantasy got duller and duller as I pursued a bigger dream: it was my duty; it became my life. I made my choices and you made yours: in the end, we simply got what we deserved.

And now, is this—this which we've just obtained together, the same light we would always try to grasp during our childhood? War is no more, and Britannia's wounds run deep, so I guess it is. And yet—

And yet, you know, Lelouch, if someone still acknowledged me as Kururugi Suzaku and asked me: "What would make you happy?", I would only be able talk about our sunflowers, about the dark sky filled with stars and your eyes fixed on it, about Nunnally's gentle laughter and cheerful giggles when we played together; I would think of my first, best friend, of his stuck-up attitude and of his slender hand which I only clutched as we ran from danger, and he wasn't quick enough on his own—I would think of these things too, but I wouldn't say them aloud, for those memories—no, _that Lelouch_, belongs only to me and to a summer that's forever gone.

_________

The world is at peace; he is no more—

_________

Lelouch, if it's decided that even you and I deserve to be born again, I swear that next time I will be brave enough to take your hand even as you count the stars, and then, enclosed in that cage of sunflowers, I will find the right words for you before our time runs out.

_________

—your hands are empty.


End file.
